“We have set it up to limit access to a select amount of vetted grids so that we can be sure content moving from YrGrid to other grids isn’t as easily copied or altered by abusing god powers or console access,” YrGrid technical director Cindy Chidester told Hypergrid Business.

For example, residents of open grids such as OSgrid, Metropolis, and Craft are not allowed to teleport in, she said.

“Others that are excluded are grids run by anonymous entities where our content creators would have little way of asserting their rights and filing takedown notices,” she added.

YrGrid hopes to foster and enable many more opportunities for its users and lower the barrier for people to join the service, the company said.

(Image courtesy YrGrid.)

“We are very excited to welcome the users of other grids and help them explore and learn and to show them everything that only a bitcoin-based economy has to offer,” said Dina Hasanbegovic, project manager at YrGrid, in a statement. “The leaves are just starting to change color in Virtual Macau and we don’t want to keep this just to ourselves anymore.”

Initially, Virtual Macau, a growing mainland continent, will be the only area accessible to foreign travelers, but over the next month YrGrid will roll out new tools enabling region owners to enable or disable hypergrid access at their convenience.

Business owners and content creators have been wary of the change citing concerns about content piracy and griefing, but YrGrid’s management appears confident.

(Image courtesy YrGrid.)

“Many people have asked me, well won’t it be easier for stuff to get stolen with hypergrid turned on?” said Chidester. “No, not really. We’ve gone above and beyond to secure the grid against content theft. Maybe a few years ago this would’ve been a problem, but rest assured, we’ve got things covered. And what’s more, it opens up a new market for their customers. Our Bitcoin economy is 100 percent compatible with hypergrid, so even our visitors can shop, spend, and game.”

The only limitation is that content creators must flag their content as “exportable” if they want foreign visitors to be able to buy them, she said. This is similar to what DigiWorldz is working on.

“At the moment, there won’t be very many merchants with exportable content,” she added. “This was just announced today and exporting is an opt-in object property, but the games will be available as region owners warm up to the idea of travelers outside the grid and enable their regions.”

(Image courtesy YrGrid.)

There are also several in-world exchanges that will allow foreign visitors to sell and buy Bitcoin to use on the grid, she added.

YrGrid’s Bitcoin currency module has been upgraded to allow for visitors to spend and receive uBTC while visiting the grid, and those funds are stored in the same secure wallets as local users. If a visitor leaves and comes back later, their uBTC balance remains just as it was left.

In the future, deposits and withdrawals from a hypergrid visitor’s wallet through a minimal web interface is also planned. Until then, YrGrid has a thriving uBTC exchange industry inworld that visitors may utilize, the company said.

(Image courtesy YrGrid.)

YrGrid is a joint effort between Sweden-based Ultimate Gaming Europe AB and Fantasy Technology Group Limited in Macau.

Maria Korolov is editor and publisher of Hypergrid Business. She has been a journalist for more than twenty years and has worked for the Chicago Tribune, Reuters, and Computerworld and has reported from over a dozen countries, including Russia and China.

It doesn’t look good that this grid addresses content protection concerns while the central figure in that first screencap is a rip of the Zero character from Borderlands 2, a 13 million dollar AAA game. Gearbox would not be happy with that.

i was surprised when i found out Mobius was allowed to HG teleport to them XD glad cus the show’s me my content policies are good ^^ also im a long time bitcoin supporter XD i mine them slow but add’s a bit extra cash in my pocket XD